I remember when George W. was inaugurated how relieved I was that the grown-ups had returned to take charge of our affairs. The sense of a mature seriousness and purpose were palpable and quite a relief after the eight years of Clintonian histrionics, sloganeering and the myriad other neuroses of liberalism. Gone overnight were the childish responsibility avoidance, blame shifting, name calling and “he made me do it” finger pointing. It was as if the adults had reentered the room to still the chaos. As Mr. Lord aptly recounts, the same palpable sense of serious leadership obtained during the Reagan presidency from day one after the mad tea-party antics of the Carter years. It is not for nothing the Iranians released the embassy hostages on that day. Even they sensed serious men were now in charge. Is there a pattern here?

I think so. I have said for 25 years that Liberalism is the ideology of adolescence. A perpetual, preserved-under-glass adolescence. Talk to any liberal, even an ostensibly grown up one, and it’s like talking to a teenager. Or examine any of their Big Ideas and they are all, at bottom, founded on a “life isn’t fair” complaint and determination to make the unfairness go away by any means necessary, if necessary. And it always is because life’s realities don’t go away, all of the whining and complaining notwithstanding. As Margaret Thatcher said, “the facts of life are conservative.” Contemporary Liberalism itself is the outgrowth of the emotional and intellectual immaturity of approximately half the ’60 baby boomers, the spoiled half, who began by trashing their own college refuges from the war and just about every other American institution and then went on their long march to seize and remake them. For our liberal boomers it is ever the Summer of Love or Days of Rage, depending on who’s ascendant in the government. Either way the country is subjected to their childish drive to have chocolate cake and ice cream every day and nobody has to do chores or go to school or inflicted on the body politic are the crying fits of spoiled brats demanding they be taken seriously and run the show again. But no matter what, for at least 30 years or so, about half our electorate and their leaders alternately promise pie in the sky or stamp their feet and hold their breath.

Like the duality of any enthusiastic adolescent given a little power and authority our little liberal rascals are quick to abuse the power while neglecting their rightful duties. Again, take your average modern 17-year-old, please. He expects to use the family car at will but must yet be told twice weekly, as he has had to be told for years, to take out the garbage lest he “forget” and the garbage pile up. So the fulfillment of his duties becomes the responsibility of someone else. And then he indignantly demands his own car on his parents’ dime because, after all, it’s demeaning for a 17 year old in this day and age to have to ask for permission. Should he be given a car that will only instill a greater sense of self-importance and nullify, in his mind, the now unreasonable demand he take out the garbage at all. Because, after all, is he not now more grown up? And so it goes and how it is we have an administration who alternately elevates ranting loons, tax cheats and other poseurs to newly created political offices building the New Utopia while roughly half the positions in the workaday offices that actually attempt to get something done go unfilled.— Mark Shepler Jupiter, Florida

Of course, the White House knew about Jones’s past and ideology. They recruited him. They swooned over him.

But to me, the real scandal is that 69 million or so of the electorate, through ignorance and/or hatred of George W. Bush, installed a Marxist who would hire someone like Jones and who, it seems, has no respect for the Office of the Presidency he holds and our country that he’s supposed to represent.

Obama and his troupe continue to reveal the real color of their brand of change. For example, Sunday morning, Obama’s mouthpieces David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs were on, respectively, “Meet the Press” and “This Week.” They offered no criticism and/or condemnation of Jones. That shouldn’t be news, given how, during this flap, Obama never did.

And Barack Hussein Obama continues to reveal that he wasn’t, isn’t and won’t remotely be a centrist, regardless of how many times he claims to be, or how much the state-controlled media insists he is.— C. Kenna Amos Jr. Princeton , West Virginia

I was going to read your article then I saw the obscene hate pop-up and left. Now I know you guys are partisan hacks without the common sense to employ reason over ignorant hype.

At some point you and everyone else on BOTH extremes (yes, you are an extremist if you use antagonistic anti-left rhetoric) is either going to have to take a breath and try to act like adults. — Jesse Putnam

Has it occurred to anyone that the powers that be in this particular White House want Van Jones precisely because of his police record?— Gretchen L. Chellson Alexandria, Virginia

“Obviously, there’s work to be done in both India and China, because the infanticide rate of girl babies is still overwhelmingly high….”

More cultural imperialism from the white-skinned she-devil!

” … unfortunately with technology, parents are able to use sonograms to determine the sex of a baby, and to abort girl children simply because they’d rather have a boy. And those are deeply set attitudes.”

Unfortunately? Ultrasonography is a great medical advance. Ignorant peasant women in China and India, with no access to such modern healthcare, are reduced to postpartum abortion of their female issue. How else can these women exercise choice?

Maybe abortion clinics should require women to view their sonograms prior to the procedure. Perhaps we ethnocentric self-righteous Americans should try it here before imposing our values on other cultures. Sell it to the sisterhood as “informed choice.” Let us know how that goes, Madame Secretary.

Did those “deeply set attitudes” afflicting the ignorant masses of the world ever hold sway in Western thought? And if so, how did the West overcome the notion that women and children were chattel?

Madame Secretary, do not let your heart be troubled.Remember that “a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy.” Just substitute girl for boy — all are mammals. And if it’s any consolation, you gals aren’t alone — African-American fetuses have no civil rights either.— Dan Martin Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Dear sir, I must protest at an element of “beardism” in Scruton’s otherwise perceptive essay. Personally I choose not to scrape the stubble off my chin every morning, but this does not make me a mad Mullah or any other kind of ranting hypocrite. There are smooth faced Mullahs, mad and otherwise, but often paranoid, who are just as dangerous. I agree about paranoia, the drive behind it is that one is superior therefore hated and bedevilled by the inferior, in other words, an inferiority complex. Paranoids are always victims no matter how much damage they wreak, cf Hitler.— Fred Middleton UK

What a great surprise to read about my favorite singer’s autobiography on The American Spectator. There are a few factual problems with the review, however. One is that E’s mother died two years after the album in question; it’s his sister that died close to its release. In addition, Linklater’s view of Many Worlds is the pop-culture one (a human-centric version, which states that we ultimately make every decision we consider), not the actual one (which states that anything that is quantum-dynamically possible occurs). Thus it is not truly a “good … introduction to the theory.” Also, the Star Trek episode aired over a decade prior to Hugh’s death. Finally, the final paragraph shouldn’t be indented.

Still, minor quibbles aside, great to see it (and to see that mention of the Bush campaign’s dunderheaded decision to vilify one of his albums didn’t deter or even warrant mention in the review).— Michael

Mr. Peters offers the correct prescription for healing Detroit. And if it is good enough for Government Motors, it is good enough the American public, or more specifically, the American health care system, but the problem is one of diagnosis. Peters’ medicine would cure the patient if money were the true the problem. The problem is not one of pure economics, but one of economics as a political tool. The Left is only concerned with power and how to keep it. No, as long as the Left is in charge, this patient is staying on long term life support.— I.M. Kessel